


Wrap My Words Around You

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-11
Updated: 2005-03-11
Packaged: 2019-05-15 21:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14798024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: Late at night in a California hotel suite, someone is trying to write the most important speech of their life.





	Wrap My Words Around You

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Wrap My Words Around You**

**by: Francesca**

**Pairing(s):** CJ/Sam  
**Rating:** YTEEN  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters (I wish) but am just borrowing them for a while I will put them back - honest. The lyrics are by Daniel Bedingfield and the song is ‘Wrap my words around you’  
**Summary:** Late at night in a California hotel suite, someone is trying to write the most important speech of their life.  
**Spoiler:** Sometime after #410 ‘Arctic Radar’  
**Author's Note:** Credit as always goes to Karen for the Beta read. 

Four Seasons Hotel Governor Suite, Newport Beach, Night 

He comes in from the dinner and slings his jacket across the back of the chair. Another night, another dinner, more speeches, smiling and trying to eat rubber chicken, often both at the same time. There’s a Wet bar in the corner of his hotel suite and he opens it, picks out a beer and pops the cap. He sits on the sofa in the living area of the suite he’s still living in, despite having been in California for seven days already, because he’s been too busy to look for a house. 

He misses the White House, the West Wing, and late at night at times like this he looks out of the windows of the hotel room and looks at the skyline, so different from what he could see from his office or from his house in Georgetown. He misses them, Josh, Toby, Leo, Donna, the President and her, especially her. 

There’s an A4 legal pad on the table and a pen, and he drags them towards him and takes another pull on the bottle. He knows what he’s going to do, over the years it’s almost become a ritual - have a hard day, grab a bottle and try to write the most important speech of his life. And every time he fails. He’s filled waste paper baskets with drafts, gone to bed countless times only to read his words in the morning and throw the pages in the air and go back to the drawing board. 

Words come easily to him, he’s written speeches for Senators, Movie stars and possibly the King of Belgium once. He’s written, and rewritten, the State of the Union address more than once; he’s reworked the President’s speeches in limos and running up stairs. He has heard his words spoken by some of the greatest Orators of this time…but all that was easy. Because he never cared when he wrote for movie stars and Senators and the words flowed. He cared when he wrote for the President and that was harder - it took two of them, him and Toby to hone the words. But he can't call Toby and ask for help on this one, and it matters more than anything else he has ever written or will ever write…and he’s been writing it for the last four years and tearing it up every time. 

He takes another pull at his beer and picks up the pen. 

He can visualise her now, her smile and the look in her eyes, the way she moves and he takes a deep breath. 

The pen begins to move across the legal pad, slowly at first, then faster. He stops, reads it and rips the page up, rolls it into a ball and throws it at the waste paper basket - where it lands. He allows himself a small smile, all that time sugar tossing in the White House Mess wasn’t wasted, though he wishes he was there now. 

He gets up and paces the floor, scribbling notes on the legal pad, and screwing them up and tossing them. Finally he puts the pad down, gets another beer from the mini bar and on his way back turns on the stereo in the corner, it’s tuned to a local radio station and he can’t be bothered to change it. 

He’s filled the bin with yellow paper balls, and has his third bottle of cold beer dripping condensation onto the table, when a beat from the radio catches his attention. He lifts his head from the empty pad, which at the moment is still telling him ‘I’m a blank piece of paper you want to dance with me?’ when the words come, and he’s listening. 

Is it fair to write a song to a woman?  
Is it fair play to try and win her heart?  
Is it right to bring her sonnets  
in the morning time?  
To express the first few  
Longings when they start  
to express the first few  
Longings when they start 

He doesn’t know what would have happened if he’d told her at the beginning, before they had history, before he became familiar and bound in the role of friend. Sometimes he feels they’re parallel lines running together but doomed never to meet, and that hurts. Leo once told him he was one of the greatest minds of his generation, he didn’t tell Leo then what he’d once told the man’s daughter, that most of the time he’s only playing smart. Leo has a faith in him Mallory never had, and he realises he never cared what Mallory thought about him and that says it all. 

But what if he’d told her at the beginning, he’d been in the middle of a messy break up with Lisa when it felt as though his heart had been torn out, would she have believed him then? He thinks of the nights she and Josh sat up with him on the campaign trail, of falling asleep on sofa’s with them. Sometimes watching her and Josh together is a spectator sport, he and Toby could sell tickets. But that’s not what he wants to tell her. 

Is it right to let her feelings  
Rise to catch you?  
Is it OK when her heart begins to fall?  
Would you blame me if I  
wrap my words around you girl?  
Would I wrong you  
to say anything at all?  
Would I wrong you  
to say anything at all? 

He’s tried not saying anything, of ignoring these feelings and hoping that they’d die away but over time they’ve just grown stronger. Even when he’s never been anything but brutally honest with himself about his chances there are still the secrets they share, nicknames, dances, sitting on Josh’s stoop drinking beer and rearranging the world, being in the West Wing and actually making a difference. He’s had her fall asleep on him on long flights and sat there as her head rested on his shoulder and imagined kissing her. He’s turned up on her doorstep in the pouring rain and she’s opened her door and let him in and let him talk; let him sleep on her couch or in her spare room. He remembers dances at dinners, drinks in the Hawk and Dove and sitting on her couch, or with her on Toby’s and all these things have never let him stop dreaming of there being a someday, and a ‘them’ and a together. Though there have been times when he wonders what she would have said if he’d spoken, the words have never come. 

He picks up the pad and starts again, the music has become background noise as his pen moves across the paper and he tries to find words for everything he wants to say. He wants to tell her how special she is, how much he loves her and hopefully he can find the words that will make her understand. 

But if I wrap my words around you  
Wrap my words around you  
If I wrap my words around you  
would you stay  
would you stay, would you?  
Wrap my words around you  
Wrap my words around you  
if I wrap my words around you  
would you stay  
would it play with your heart? 

He thinks of her in her Blue Armani the time they went to the Kennedy Centre together, of the fact that she announced she was great in bed in the Oval office, don’t follow that line of thought Seaborn you’ll get totally diverted. He remembers her doing the Jackal the night they elected their first Supreme Court justice and can’t help smiling, and the pen moves faster across the page. He thinks of so many things as the thoughts come thick and fast and the pages fill. Sometimes it’s as though the words flow out of him and explain everything in his mind and inside his heart, and part of him hopes that in the morning when he reads this back maybe this time it will still say everything he means. Or maybe like all the others he has written over the years in the morning this will still fall short. 

Am I a hunter if  
I send poems to please you?  
Am I a cad if  
I mean everything I say?  
Should I even let you know  
This song's about you girl  
Just because I want to see you smile today  
And my words may bind you  
To me much too tightly  
You may choke on them if we fall apart  
It's not fair to write a song to a woman  
Because a woman takes a song into her heart  
Because a woman takes a song into her heart 

He’d offer this woman poetry; he’d offer her the moon and the stars if they were his to give. He’d cross the country if she asked him, barefoot possibly and over broken glass. Though he knows many things about her one of those things is she’s bad at asking for help….he smiles ruefully thinking about the time she came to him to ask about the census. He remembers telling her about his place in the Hamptons and wishing he could take her there, he remembers her telling him "Sam, Sam, the sunshine man. Get on the couch. I'm going to do you right now." He remembers saying "okay" and the looks on both their faces when they’d realised what they’d said… Sometimes C.J gave him hope and he writes this down, trying to explain to her that he means everything, everything. Because this is one speech he’ll only get one chance to make, it has to be perfect because she deserves nothing else, but also because he risks losing everything he already has, the easy friendship, the laughter, the nicknames and the sharing if he doesn’t get this right.

He sits back for a moment and takes another drag from the bottle of beer and pulls a hand through his hair. He remembers he got a letter last year asking him if he would donate his brain to a medical school in Granada. There are still times when he thinks, "Yeah, why not just get it over with." He reads through the three pages, written both sides of A4 and thinks that maybe this time he has it, maybe this time it's right. He signs his name at the bottom and folds it neatly. He gets up and walks to the desk drawer where he will find, as always, the stationary the hotel leaves. The drawer is refilled every day by the maids and he’s sure they must think he eats it or something. He puts the letter in an envelope and addresses it: 

Ms C.J Cregg, 101 Georgetown, Washington D.C 

He doesn’t seal it though, or put a stamp on it….he knows he’ll read it again in the morning, and part of him knows that odds are it will go the way of all the rest but there’s still a small part of him that thinks maybe this time, this time he’ll have said everything he wants to. 

He looks at his watch and shudders, its 3am and he knows Scott will have packed his schedule for tomorrow. He leaves the letter on the table, drops the empty bottles in the wastepaper basket where they land on the balls of yellow paper he’s already filled it with. Finally Sam turns off the radio and walks into his bedroom and shuts the door. 

Four Seasons Hotel Governor Suite, Newport Beach, 6am 

Sandy stuck her head around the door of the suite, she knew Mr Seaborn would be sleeping late, and she and the other chambermaids came in silently to clean up the living area of the suite and change the flowers so that everything would be pristine when he woke up. 

As usual the wastepaper bin was full of paper, and three bottles from the Wet Bar, which she made a mental note to restock later after he was out for the day. On her way through she noticed an addressed envelope and picked it up. 

"Ms C J Cregg, 101 Georgetown, Washington DC" - it wasn’t sealed and needed a stamp, but the letter inside was obviously completed. She picked it up, sealed it and put it in the pocket of her uniform. She’d put a stamp on it in the office and post it for Mr Seaborn; after all it was a part of the service. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

So let me wrap my words around you  
Wrap my words around you  
Wrap my words around you  
Till you stay, till you stay, let me  
Wrap my words around you  
Wrap my words around you  
Darling, wrap my words around you  
Till you stay  
Would it play with your heart 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 


End file.
